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Again, lots of smoke, but no fire. The article that the Cato piece refers to was called A Return To National Greatness; A Manifesto for a Lost Creed (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...8/333pjkmj.asp), which explicitly rejects central planning and big government. It begins with a description of the Library of Congress building, and links it to the attitudes that produced it:

The Elevation of America

The designers of the Library of Congress had a view of history that is now deeply unfashionable. They saw civilization as a chain of achievement in which each generation is the grateful inheritor of a precious legacy and is called upon as a matter of highest duty to add to and continue the great transmission. Around the Jefferson Building's central dome is a mural that epitomizes this idea. It features 12 seated, monumental figures representing the nations or epochs that, in the words of the building's original catalogue, "have contributed most to the development of present-day civilization in this country."

Under each figure is a plaque naming that culture's great achievement. Egypt is first, given credit for "Written Records." Then come Judea (religion) , Greece (philosophy), Rome (administration), Islam (physics), the Middle Ages (modern languages), Italy (the fine arts), Germany (printing), Spain (discovery), England (literature), and France (emancipation). The list ends with America, which is credited with "science." The American figure in the mural, based on the young Abraham Lincoln, is dressed as an engineer, sitting in a machine shop, contemplating an electric dynamo.

The theory of history depicted in this mural balanced change and continuity. It demanded that people march forward by looking backward. It gave America impressive historical roots, a spiritual connection to the centuries at a time when Americans like Henry James felt their civilization was "thin." And it assigned a specific historic role to America as the latest successor to Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome. In the procession of civilization, certain nations rise up to make extraordinary contributions. Their golden ages, it was believed, are to be revered and studied. The designers of the Library of Congress, like so many of their countrymen, thought America was on the verge of its own golden age. At the dawn of the 20th century, America was to take its turn at global supremacy. It was America's task to take the grandeur of past civilizations, modernize it, and democratize it. This common destiny would unify diverse Americans and give them a great national purpose.

The designers must have felt in their bones what Tocqueville observed: Democracy has a tendency to slide into nihilistic mediocrity if its citizens are not inspired by some larger national goal. If they think of nothing but their narrow self-interest, of their commercial activities, they lose a sense of grand aspiration and noble purpose. "What frightens me most," Tocqueville writes, "is the danger that, amid all the constant trivial preoccupations of private life, ambition may lose both its force and its greatness, that human passions may grow gentler and at the same time baser, with the result that the progress of the body social may become daily quieter and less aspiring."

He then goes on to describe the current attitude towards American exceptionalism:

Post- Greatness America

Our culture no longer speaks of a unified and coherent order. The post-modernist view emphasizes fragmentation and disorder. Philosophers talk about contingency and irony and the ever-shifting meanings of words. Since Hemingway, our intellectuals have perceived hypocrisy, not transcendence, when words like "honor" and "glory" are used.

Our official culture disdains the idea that history is a story of progress unfolding. We think it naive. Maybe it was World War I that made the idea unpopular, or the Holocaust, or a thousand other events in our pessimism-inducing century. We no longer look at history as a succession of golden ages. Instead, history is something of a chaos; cultures bubble about in a relativistic stew. Historians do not measure cultures by their contribution to one central world civilization.

And, save in the speeches of politicians who usually have no clue what they are talking about, America is assigned no special role as the vanguard of civilization. Nobody talks of America as a New Jerusalem; that would be ethnocentric. Nor do we engage in grandiose hero-worship; indeed, we are more adept at debunking than idolizing. We are suspicious of hierarchies, of the idea that one art form is higher than another, that one way of living is superior to another. On the contrary, as Denis de Rougemont says, "It is whatever is lower that we take to be more real."

America is a more dominant power in the world than Americans a century ago could ever have imagined. Yet we have almost none of the sense of global purpose that Americans had when they only dreamed of enjoying the stature we possess today. Domestically, we have a president and a Congress whose major common purpose is . . . balancing the budget.

Mind you, this was written during the Clinton era. His point is that those Americans who shape opinion no longer believe that we, as Americans, are part of something greater than ourselves, that America is unique and worth protecting and advancing, that America is exceptional. He then goes on to dissect what he saw as the conservative failings in this area:

The fact is, if liberals choke on the "greatness" part of national greatness, conservatives choke on the "national" part. Most conservatives have come to confuse "national" with "federal." When they hear of a national effort, they think "big government program." Conservatives have taken two sensible ideas and ballooned them to the point of elephantiasis. The first is anti-statism. They took a truth -- that government often causes suffering when it interferes in the free market -- and stretched it into a blanket hostility to government. Instead of arguing that government should be limited but energetic, slender but strong, they have often argued that government is itself evil.

In so doing, conservatives have introduced their own version of the liberal sin by allowing the private to eclipse the public. Many conservatives argue simply that the private realm is good and the public realm is bad, that private endeavor is moral and public endeavor is corrupt. They saw that many of the public policies that emerged during the 60 years of liberal dominance had nightmarish consequences. Now many can't conceive of a public realm that would affirm any of the virtues they hold dear. Instead, they have concluded that the public policy issuing from the public realm is the problem. They want to free the private sector from big government, which is a worthy goal, but you can't lead a great nation if you don't have an affirmative view of the public realm.

What he is saying is not that America needs central planning (in fact, he explicitly rejects that), but that we need to have a strong but limited government, which is pretty much why we have a Constitution in the first place, and that this government must identify with the basic purpose of America. Ronald Reagan understood that when he referred to America as the "shining city on the hill", a phrase that evoked Athens and Rome and put America in the context of a continuum of great civilizations that led by example as well as through power.

Finally, Brooks proposes, in broad terms, what he sees as the need for the government to restore its vision:

Restoring American Greatness

Can we create a 21st-century version of the national-greatness ideal and so recapture the confidence manifest in the Library of Congress? What is needed is a process of pruning -- cutting government's forays into private life while strengthening its public role. This is not the anti-statism of recent conservative vintage, nor is it a proposal to reinvent government along neoliberal lines. It's a more fundamental change that requires a transformation in the way we think about the federal government's role.

Currently, American political philosophy has divided itself into the opposing principles of "order" and "freedom." Now, when liberals stand for one, conservatives stand for the other. Liberals want economic order; conservatives want economic freedom. Conservatives want social order; liberals want social freedom.

This has forced the national government to engage in a pervasive balancing act. It is forever invading the private sphere in an effort to strengthen community here, or strengthen individual freedoms there. Washington becomes the battleground on which the fine distinctions between individual rights and community prerogatives are fought out. The national-greatness ideal assigns the federal government another role: It should accomplish national missions. And in so doing, it will set the national tone.

The national mission can be carried out only by individuals and families -- not by collectives, as in socialism and communism. Instead, individual ambition and willpower are channeled into the cause of national greatness. And by making the nation great, individuals are able to join their narrow concerns to a larger national project.

Historically, national missions have included settling the West, building the highway system, creating the post-war science faculties, exploring space, waging the Cold War, and disseminating American culture throughout the world.

The most successful missions have set physical goals, rather than abstract ones: America in 1897 constructed the world's finest library. The library has had an important impact on culture, but its impact is the byproduct of a physical project. Sometimes the federal government has funded these efforts. Sometimes it has merely identified the new national cause. Sometimes it has eliminated barriers to ambition.

It almost doesn't matter what great task government sets for itself, as long as it does some tangible thing with energy and effectiveness. The first task of government is to convey a spirit of confidence and vigor that can then spill across the life of the nation. Stagnant government drains national morale. A government that fails to offer any vision merely feeds public cynicism and disenchantment.

But energetic government is good for its own sake. It raises the sights of the individual. It strengthens common bonds. It boosts national pride. It continues the great national project. It allows each generation to join the work of their parents. The quest for national greatness defines the word " American" and makes it new for every generation.

The bolded text shows that this is not a call to centralized planning, any more than the expansion of the nation westward, or the moon landings were a call to central planning. Rather, it is a call for the government to establish its mission within the boundaries set by the Constitution, beyond simply going through the motions of budgets and administration, which eventually becomes a game of fleecing the people. America, unlike France or England, is not a tribal nation whose borders happened to coincide with the fringes of the tribe. America is first and foremost, an idea, that people can govern themselves, and in doing so, accomplish great things. It doesn't presume that the average person is a sheep to be guided, but a citizen, to be inspired. Brooks isn't calling for central planning, but a reengagement of the national mission, to protect our liberty and defeat those that would destroy it. Since our founding, Americans have done more to advance global science, art, culture and civics than the European states that preceded us had in the previous two millennia. Within two centuries after the Declaration of Independence, Americans walked on the moon, split the atom, shortened the physical distance between east and west (the Panama Canal), liberated hundreds of millions of people and inspired billions more. That is our legacy, and if the best that we can hope for from the Hagels and Obamas of the world is a retreat from it, then we are betraying that legacy.

Oh, now that's just BS. Taxes were going to go up no matter what congressional Republicans did, because the Bush rates were temporary, and due to expire. Obama could sit on his hands, and get the tax hikes that he wanted while blaming Republicans for intransigence. That's the context. Kristol didn't propose tax hikes, he proposed protecting the tax rates for as many Americans as possible, by calling Obama's bluff, which is what Boehner eventually tried to do, and which ended up demonstrating that Obama was lying about not wanting to raise taxes on the middle class:

Kristol continued, saying he doesn't understand why Republicans don't just take President Obama's offer to go ahead and extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone making under $250,000 per year while a larger deal is reached. "I don't really understand why Republicans don't take Obama's offer to freeze taxes for everyone below $250,000, make it $500,000, make it $1 million,"

This is how you distort a position to make it appear that Kristol is a Marxist, but it is a lie.

ROFLOL!!!!! Henry Jackson was a conservative Democrat at a time when such a thing existed. Had he lived, he'd also have found his way to the Republican Party, just as Ronald Reagan did two decades earlier, and his key staffers did after the fact. Jackson and the neocons were at home in a Democratic Party that was willing to fight communism, cut taxes (remember JFK?) and inspire Americans to take bold actions when necessary. Would any of them be at home in that party today? Of course not. But then, neither would JFK.

You made one (partially) valid point in your entire tirade, Molon, and it's all a distraction, since you still haven't answered the most important question. I will break this post here so that you can respond to it without confusion.

Originally Posted by Molon LabeBecause it's not that what Buchanan Larions, McConnel, AND REALIST SCHOLAR LAWLER says is "untrue". Or that what Hagel said that TWS quotes is untrue.

Wait a minute, are you saying that you agree with Buchanan's statements? That you believe that his statements about Jews having excessive influence in America are true? That we are part of a fifth column that is working towards war on behalf of Israel, that we are disloyal to the United States? Those statements of his are bigoted, ugly attacks on the loyalty of those Americans who see Israel as a strategic ally. The dual-loyalty canard is a hallmark of anti-semitism. No more games about my playing the Jew card, just be up front about whether or not you agree with Buchanan's libels.

Once again, here are the quotes that you are claiming are true:

“Iran doesn’t frighten me and I don’t think it should frighten the American people. They don’t have a bomb. They haven’t made a decision to build one…and the Israelis have 300 atomic bombs. Who presents the existential threat to whom?” http://www.nationalreview.com/media-...rael-noah-glyn

“If you want to know ethnicity and power in the United States Senate, 13 members of the Senate are Jewish folks who are from 2 percent of the population. That is where real power is at..” (“The McLaughlin Group,” Feb. 2, 2007)

“Israel and its Fifth Column…seek to stampede us into war with Iran.”
From a July 2008 column

"If U.S. Jewry takes the clucking appeasement of the Catholic cardinalate as indicative of our submission, it is mistaken. When Cardinal O'Connor of New York declares this 'is not a fight between Catholics and Jews,' he speaks for himself. Be not afraid, Your Eminence; just step aside, there are bishops and priests ready to assume the role of defender of the faith.

2010: “If [Elena] Kagan [President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court] is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats. Is this Democrats’ idea of diversity?”
-- Column, “Are Liberals Anti-WASP?” May 14, 2010

“They charge us with anti-Semitism…The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a 'passionate attachment' to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what's good for Israel is good for America.”
-- Neo-Conned! Just War Principles: A Condemnation of War in Iraq,

"The problem is: Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody."
- NY Post, March 17, 1990 (from a column about the trial of accused Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk)

"In the late 1940’s and 1950’s…race was never a preoccupation with us, we rarely thought about it….There were no politics to polarize us then, to magnify every slight. The ‘Negroes’ of Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars, movie houses, playgrounds and churches; and we had ours."
- Right From the Beginning

2006: “Today, we find such world views repellent. But, if racism means a belief in the superiority of the white race and its inherent right to rule other peoples, American history is full of such men. Indeed, few great men could be found in America or Europe before WWII who did no accept white supremacy as natural.”
-- State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, P. 85

And once again, I want to know if you are arguing that Buchanan is correct, that American Jews form a "fifth column" in the US, that we have too much power and that this power undermines the United States, that Diesel engines don't emit enough exhaust to kill (an argument of Holocaust deniers) and that white supremacy is "natural". We all want to know this.

I have neve once claimed anything anti-semitical You brought the Joooos into this, and as I suspected you wish to play that game. I'm not playing it. You and i've had too many conversations over the years that prove otherwise and you know it. My belief that Buchanan still stands for some some level of rationality in Foreign policy does not equate a black and white agreement with every view he holds. He may take it an offensive level for many, I agree. But attacking, questioning or the foreign policy of Israel, does not make one an anti-semite, anymore than it makes them a Anti-Muslim for criticizing Iran and the Mujahadeen in Afganistan, or to criticize American foreign policy makes one Ant-American..

You can't seem to seperate a conceptual belief from a slander. As I said before, You either engage in refuting the central point or you can talk to air. You know how to do it....you've done it before. But you're either getting lazy or just tired of losing the argument.

You think Hagel is terrible and Kristol, and McCain, and little tinkerbell Lindsey Graham are all much more grand, and I do not. The point: So sad the Neocons are on their way into the ash heap of history. Good riddince to them. Too bad it was an ass hat like Obama who did it and not a Republican. Another reason why the party lost the last two elections. They were clueless.

Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound - Unknown

Lube is proving what happens when you use only Paulbot approved sources and cherry picked pieces from other places to try and back up your argument.

Ya....I used The Weekly Standard and their own works and words in much of it. Nevermind what they actually say though.

Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound - Unknown

Ya....I used The Weekly Standard and their own works and words in much of it. Nevermind what they actually say though.

Except that you didn't cite them. You cited articles about them, but not by them. In fact, the one article from the Weekly Standard quoted extensively specifically blew most of your claims about it (and the author) out of the water.

Originally Posted by Molon Labe

I have neve once claimed anything anti-semitical You brought the Joooos into this, and as I suspected you wish to play that game. I'm not playing it.

No, Hagel brought the Joooooos into this by claiming that we had a lobby that undermined American policy through intimidation, then you brought Pat Buchanan into this to defend him, which opened up Buchanan's antisemitism and bigotry. You keep defending an anti-Semite by citing other anti-Semites, and then object that I've begun to wonder whether you share some of those ideas, especially since you refuse to give a straight answer when asked.

Originally Posted by Molon Labe

You and i've had too many conversations over the years that prove otherwise and you know it. My belief that Buchanan still stands for some some level of rationality in Foreign policy does not equate a black and white agreement with every view he holds. He may take it an offensive level for many, I agree.

And for the others, there's Stormfront. Buchanan doesn't simply say things that some "may" find offensive, he says things that are patently false, offensive and bigoted. Soft pedaling that so that you don't have to answer for him when you have previously stated that his comments should be taken for their accuracy is not going to fly this time. You demanded that I look at the factual basis of his statements, and I have. Now you do it.

Originally Posted by Molon Labe

But attacking, questioning or the foreign policy of Israel, does not make one an anti-semite, anymore than it makes them a Anti-Muslim for criticizing Iran and the Mujahadeen in Afganistan, or to criticize American foreign policy makes one Ant-American..

You're equating Iran and the Taliban with Israel and the United States? Seriously? In order for that to be valid, Israel would have to be a totalitarian theocratic state that exports terrorists in order to impose Judaism on the rest of the world. Judaism would have to be a totalitarian ideology that commands subjugation of non-believers. America would be a genocidal imperialist state that seeks global conquest in the name of God. Not even the most demented DUmmy believes that, but if you are going to make that parallel, then perhaps you are posting in the wrong place.

Originally Posted by Molon Labe

You can't seem to seperate a conceptual belief from a slander. As I said before, You either engage in refuting the central point or you can talk to air. You know how to do it....you've done it before. But you're either getting lazy or just tired of losing the argument.

On the contrary, it is you who keeps evading the central point, which is that Hagel is not qualified for the job, due to a worldview which he cannot defend when called on it, but which you keep claiming is "realist". You won't discuss Hagel's positions, his history of anti-Semitic statements, his failure to recognize terrorism when it stares him in the face, his naive view of Iran or his undermining of US interests. And every time we get back to that central point, you either lapse into incoherent, deranged denunciations of neocons, slanderous accusations of Trotskyite and Marxist attitudes and personal attacks about kissing the asses of Bill Kristol and PNAC, or you disappear until you think that we've forgotten your . You've done everything that you can to avoid the central point, and then you have the nerve to accuse me of what you've been doing? This is why I compared you to Gator, because you won't argue, but you will heap insults

Originally Posted by Molon Labe

You think Hagel is terrible and Kristol, and McCain, and little tinkerbell Lindsey Graham are all much more grand, and I do not. The point: So sad the Neocons are on their way into the ash heap of history. Good riddince to them. Too bad it was an ass hat like Obama who did it and not a Republican. Another reason why the party lost the last two elections. They were clueless.

Little tinkerbell? What is wrong with you? All things being equal, I will take Kristol and McCain over Hagel, because they understand the nature of the threat that we face, while Hagel does not. You keep personalizing this because of your increasingly unhinged hatred of anyone in the conservative movement who isn't a Paulista or a Buchananite. It's guys like you, who demand ideological purity without any depth of understanding, who make it possible for the left to win elections. Graham's a tool, but he was right about Hagel, and in the war that America is fighting against totalitarian Islamists, I'll take my allies where I can get them. You, OTOH, don't need allies so much as help. You really do seem to be channeling Gator whenever Israel comes up, and more than a couple of people have commented on the similarities between you. Get help. Seriously.

This is why I compared you to Gator, because you won't argue, but you will heap insults

You really do seem to be channeling Gator whenever Israel comes up, and more than a couple of people have commented on the similarities between you. Get help. Seriously.

When he starts his national watermelon day, we'll know it's Gator. Another similarityto Gator is never answeromg a direct question. You can press and press for a reply, but he usually just ignores. That's classic Gator style.

Plus he uses the key words like neocon and does the anti-Israeli song and dance.

‎" To the world you are just one more person, but to a rescued pet, you are the world.""A Nation of Sheep Breeds a Government of Wolves!"

When he starts his national watermelon day, we'll know it's Gator. Another similarityto Gator is never answeromg a direct question. You can press and press for a reply, but he usually just ignores. That's classic Gator style.

Plus he uses the key words like neocon and does the anti-Israeli song and dance.

Just like peter does, never answers a question he just moves to the next talking point.

I will say it again. This schmuck will be confirmed.. All this over the coals crap is nothing more than a side show to appease people.

Looking more doubtful now as each day passes. The vote's been delayed...it's turning out he's been getting speaking $$$ from organizations with names like "Friends of Hamas"...and from Turkey. And he's refusing to give full disclosure on all the money he's taken and from whom.